In Morocco eBook

Meanwhile a great Sultan was once more to appear in
the land. Moulay-el-Hassan, who ruled from 1873
to 1894, was an able and energetic administrator.
He pieced together his broken empire, asserted his
authority in Fez and Marrakech, and fought the rebellious
tribes of the west. In 1877 he asked the French
government to send him a permanent military mission
to assist in organizing his army. He planned an
expedition to the Souss, but the want of food and water
in the wilderness traversed by the army caused the
most cruel sufferings. Moulay-el-Hassan had provisions
sent by sea, but the weather was too stormy to allow
of a landing on the exposed Atlantic coast, and the
Sultan, who had never seen the sea, was as surprised
and indignant as Canute to find that the waves would
not obey him.

His son Abd-el-Aziz was only thirteen years old when
he succeeded to the throne. For six years he
remained under the guardianship of Ba-Ahmed, the black
Vizier of Moulay-el-Hassan, who built the fairy palace
of the Bahia at Marrakech, with its mysterious pale
green padlocked door leading down to the secret vaults
where his treasure was hidden. When the all-powerful
Ba-Ahmed died the young Sultan was nineteen. He
was intelligent, charming, and fond of the society
of Europeans; but he was indifferent to religious
questions and still more to military affairs, and
thus doubly at the mercy of native mistrust and European
intrigue.

Some clumsy attempts at fiscal reform, and a too great
leaning toward European habits and associates, roused
the animosity of the people, and of the conservative
party in the upper class. The Sultan’s eldest
brother, who had been set aside in his favour, was
intriguing against him; the usual Cherifian Pretender
was stirring up the factious tribes in the mountains;
and the European powers were attempting, in the confusion
of an ungoverned country, to assert their respective
ascendencies.

The demoralized condition of the country justified
these attempts, and made European interference inevitable.
But the powers were jealously watching each other,
and Germany, already coveting the certain agricultural
resources and the conjectured mineral wealth of Morocco,
was above all determined that a French protectorate
should not be set up.

In 1908 another son of Moulay-Hassan, Abd-el-Hafid,
was proclaimed Sultan by the reactionary Islamite
faction, who accused Abd-el-Aziz of having sold his
country to the Christians. Abd-el-Aziz was defeated
in a battle near Marrakech, and retired to Tangier,
where he still lives in futile state. Abd-el-Hafid,
proclaimed Sultan at Fez, was recognized by the whole
country, but he found himself unable to cope with the
factious tribes (those outside the Blad-el-Makhzen,
or governed country). These rebel tribes
besieged Fez, and the Sultan had to ask France for
aid. France sent troops to his relief, but as
soon as the dissidents were routed, and he himself
was safe, Abd-el-Hafid refused to give the French
army his support, and in 1912, after the horrible massacres
of Fez, he abdicated in favour of another brother,
Moulay Youssef, the actual ruler of Morocco.